Radio

Podcasts are more popular than ever, thanks in large part to the wildly successful This American Life produced, Serial, and the rise of smartphones and Bluetooth enabled cars, that allow listeners to stream podcasts practically anywhere.

At the World Bank Group, Senior Communications Officer, Richard Miron has produced a new podcast series, called Bookmark that explores the creative literary works of staff members.

Each week, Richard interviews a variety of staff members, past and present, who have put pen to paper and written books of their own. It’s not about World Bank books, but rather the expansive literary talent that work at the Bank.

Richard explains the thinking behind the series:

“The people of the World Bank are what makes the institution tick. They come with different experiences and from differing backgrounds. The aim of Bookmark is to show– ‘the literary side’ of those at the Bank, and to illustrate how their work has contributed to their writing and how their experience in writing has added to their work.”

The first episode features Agi Kiss, who currently works as a Regional Environmental and Safeguards Advisor. During her career at the World Bank Group, Agi worked in Nairobi, Kenya, managing a wildlife and protected areas project. She went on a number of safaris to explore the country.

Afghanistan’s Bamyan province is best known for its ancient statues of Buddha, destroyed 15 years ago by the Taliban government. Today, its relative security and freezing winters are aiding the growth of a fledgling skiing industry. Mukhtar Yadgar explains how a radio station is helping local people discuss its potential for growth.

Ilyas Tahiri, a Radio Bamyan presenter, skiing.

A five minute drive from the site where the ancient Buddhas of Bamyan once stood, a radio mast sprouts from the ground. It belongs to Radio Bamyan, a local radio station in one of Afghanistan’s most mountainous regions. It’s summer now and wisps of brown dust rise up with the heat, yet in the winter months, Radio Bamyan’s roof is covered with snow.

Bamyan’s frosty winter weather, steep slopes and relative security have popularised skiing in the province. However, there are no ski-lifts, no chalets and certainly no après-ski. In the absence of sporting infrastructure, it was recently announced that two skiers from Bamyan will be representing Afghanistan at the 2018 Pyeongchang‎ Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Bamyan is also the venue for the annual Afghan Ski Challenge – which counts ‘no weapons allowed’ amongst its rules. Yet despite these successes suggesting a potential new ski-tourism destination, most of the local population, a relatively poor community, has had little opportunity to discuss what the growth of the skiing industry would mean for them.

Ehizogie Ohiani, a Producer/Trainer for BBC Media Action in Nigeria, discusses how radio is raising awareness about the lack of hygiene amongst the butchers of Benue State, Nigeria.

A meal without meat is as good as no meal for most people in Benue State, North Central Nigeria. Considering its importance, one would expect that hygiene surrounding the preparation and sale of meat would be held in the same high esteem. This is not the case.

A murky mix of flies, blood, water, muddy walkways, sweaty bodies and smoke combine to make the abattoirs in the marketplaces of Benue State a perfect breeding ground for disease. Lack of adequate sanitation knowledge, lack of enforcement by market associations and insufficient supervision of animal slaughter by qualified veterinary officers conspire to create major health challenges for communities.

I was at Harvest FM, a local radio station in Benue State, to train producers. We were brainstorming ways we could use their popular early morning show “Good Morning Benue” to help serve the public interest. For the producers, an obvious choice was to discuss hygiene in abattoirs.

The programme explored a number of problems in the state’s local abattoirs: an absence of toilet and handwashing facilities and the practice of washing meat with untreated water sourced direct from the River Benue.

David Njuguna, a mentor for BBC Media Action Kenya, looks at how a volunteer-run local radio station is helping prevent cholera in Kenya.

Kamadi, presenter at Mtaani Radio in
Nairobi, Kenya

Last year Kenya was facing a devastating cholera outbreak. It started in the capital, Nairobi and by June 2015, a total of 4,937 cases and 97 deaths had been reported nationally.

According to public health officials, the spread of cholera in Nairobi particularly affected people living in slums. Frequent bursting of sewer lines, poor sanitation facilities and heavy rains played a major role in the outbreak. Poor hygiene practices – such as not washing hands before eating or preparing food – also contributed to the spread of disease. The outbreak eventually petered out, but the environment and practices that contributed to the spread of cholera continue to pose a threat.

In a quiet courtyard, away from the hustle and bustle of Nairobi’s Kawangware slum, a community radio station was planning a response.

Local radio

Mtaani Radio, run by a team of volunteers, was a hive of activity when I walked into their studio last week. They were recording content for ‘WASH Wednesdays’, a show looking at ways listeners can improve their health and hygiene. The show, reaching over 100,000 people in the Kawangware community, was just about to start.

It is several days after the earthquake in Nepal. A small group of Nepali women sit on the side of the road in a village in Dhading district, 26 kilometres from Kathmandu. In this village, many people lost their homes and several died in the earthquake.

The women are listening attentively to a radio programme, Milijuli Nepali meaning ‘Together Nepal’. After it finishes, one of the women starts asking the others questions: What did they think to the programme? Did they learn anything? What else would they like to hear to help them cope in the aftermath of the earthquake? The women start discussing some of the issues raised around shelter and hygiene, they like the creative ideas suggestions, particularly as they comes from a source they like and trust - the BBC. They give the researcher their ideas for future programmes and she writes them down.

New developments and curiosities from a changing global media landscape: People, Spaces, Deliberation brings trends and events to your attention that illustrate that tomorrow's media environment will look very different from today's, and will have little resemblance to yesterday's.

We have known for years that people are getting their news from an increasing array of sources -- from traditional print and radio to internet and social media. How people consume news, moreover, varies a great deal from country to country. In many developed countries television and online news are the most frequently accessed sources, while print newspapers have declined significantly. In contrast, newspapers are thriving in some middle- and low-income countries where both print and online circulations are popular. Social media is also growing as a source for news, but is doing so unevenly

However, the state of news consumption looks even more interesting- and trend lines emerge- when generational differences are considered. With age segmentation, we can see that online news is the most popular source for young people aged 18-24 who have grown up with the Internet, while TV is most popular with adults older than 55. This is important to note because current estimates from the United Nations Population Fund indicate that there are approximately 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world, and many of them live in developing countries where mobile devices that provide access to online news are increasingly common.

People, Spaces, Deliberation bloggers present exceptional campaign art from all over the world. These examples are meant to inspire.

Since the start of the current Ebola outbreak, music has been a part of efforts to sensitize and educate people about the disease. Artists in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three most affected countries, have produced several songs to inform people that the virus is real and "don't touch your friend".

The latest song to hit the airwaves, "Africa Stop Ebola", was written by Kandia Kora and Sekou Kouyaté, both of whom are from Guinea and are among the performers. It is based on lyrics outlined by Carlos Chirinos, a professor at New York University who specializes in music, radio and social change. The lyrics express messages of caution and comfort, warning people not to touch the bodies of the sick or deceased and encouraging them to trust doctors, wash their hands, and take proactive steps if they feel the symptoms of Ebola.

The song aims to build confidence in the public health sector through the cachet of the artists. Across West Africa, music, theater, and radio are popular media to spread public information, and performers are well- respected public figures with enough social weight that people to listen to them.

In order to ensure the song's messages are clear regardless of the level of literacy or education of the listeners, it is performed in French and local languages widely understood across the region.

AnOx 2013 alumni Preeti Raghunath discusses Nepal’s radio landscape, situating it within the country’s political environment. Preeti is pursuing her doctoral research at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, India, on comparative policy frameworks on Community Radio in South Asia. Her research interests include community media for peace, media in conflict and transitional societies, media policy, critical political economy, critical security studies and deliberative policy-making.

Media policies in transitional societies often mirror the nature of governance, and policy making in such nations. Nepal provides a prime case study of a transitional nation whose media policy reflects issues with its governance structures. The country itself acts as a buffer state between India and China, successfully ousted a 240-year monarchy after a decade-long civil war between the extreme-left Maoists and the King’s security forces, and became the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal in 2008. Currently, Nepal is mired in repeated attempts to draft a Constitution, and is expected to finally hold a long awaited Constituent Assembly election in November of this year. The impact of the larger political scene on media policies, especially policies concerning community radio (CR) broadcasting, makes for an interesting study.

Nepal is widely credited for being the first country in South Asia to open up its airwaves to community and private broadcasting. The National Media Policy of 1992, the National Broadcasting Act of 1993 and the National Broadcasting Regulation of 1995 permitted the establishment and broadcasting of community radio stations in the country (Pringle; Subba, 2007). In 1992 various actors such as the Nepal Press Institute, the Himal Group, Worldview Nepal and the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) came together to apply for a community radio broadcasting license. After a five-year struggle, Radio Sagarmatha became the first CR station in Nepal and South Asia to receive a broadcasting license and go on air in 1996 (UNESCO, 2003). With that, Nepal’s successful tryst with community broadcasting became a talking point for activists in countries like India and Bangladesh, who were lobbying for the opening up of airwaves in their respective countries.

Though I work full-time on social media for the World Bank, my career started in public broadcasting. “Radio is the modern version of oral tradition,” a former journalism professor of mine would say, likening radio to the way in which people have communicated for years: using stories, narratives, to connect, to break down complex ideas into concrete pieces. That line resonated with me, summing up the power of radio to connect people using the shared experience of a broadcast.

"CIMA is pleased to release a special report, Making Media Development More Effective, by Tara Susman-Peña, a media development and communications consultant. She was the director of research for Internews’s Media Map Project, which informed this paper. A wealth of research demonstrates that a healthy media sector is consistently paired with better development outcomes and can contribute to better development. However, media development–donor support for strengthening the quality, independence, and sustainability of the news media–has comprised only about 0.5 percent of overall aid to developing countries. Should media development’s track record earn it a more central place in international development? A strong evidence base of original research conducted for the Media Map Project, a collaborative effort between Internews and the World Bank Institute, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides the opportunity to analyze the extent to which donor support to media has helped the media sector fulfill its promise to strengthen development. This report points out that donors to media development have a number of blind spots that prevent their interventions from being more effective and that media development stakeholders could improve their efforts by applying aid effectiveness principles to their practice." READ MORE

"Movements towards open data involve the publication of datasets (from metadata on publications, to research, to operational project statistics) online in standard formats and without restrictions on reuse. A number of open datasets are published as linked data, creating a web of connected datasets. Governments, companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the world are increasingly exploring how the publication and use of open and linked data can have impacts on governance, economic growth and the delivery of services. This article outlines the historical, social and technical trajectories that have led to current interest in, and practices around, open data. Drawing on three example cases of working with open and linked data it takes a critical look at issues that development sector knowledge intermediaries may need to engage with to ensure the socio-technical innovations of open and linked data work in the interests of greater diversity and better development practice."READ MORE